Vincent Riebeekstarted dancing hip-hop and street dance in his pre-teens. While finishing his high school education he went to the pre-education dance program at the AHK Amsterdam where he is currently studying at the School for New Dance Development. During his education he had a chance to work with a.o. Benoit Lachambre, Simon Aughterlony, Ibrahim Quraishi, Hooman Sharifi, David Zambrano, Gabriel Smeets, Robert Steijn, Renee Copraij, Bettina Masuch, David Zambrano, Jeremy Wade, Meg Stuart, Deborah Hay and Janine Durning. He was a recipient of the DanceWeb Scholarship at Impulstanz Vienna in 2010. His work is shown at various theatres in Belgium, Germany, The Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, Slovenia and New Zealand and he received residencies at Impulstanz Vienna, Workspace Brussels, Frascati Amsterdam and PACT Zollverein.

Vincent and Florentina started collaborating in early school years at the SNDO. Their duet Kein Applaus fuer Scheisse was called one of the revelations of the Batard festival for young makers in Brussels October 2010 and is currently touring at various international performance festivals around Europe. Vincent and Florentina are premiering their newest show Spirit in October 2012 at Campo/Ghent.

Intervju

1. Where are you starting from and how?

The theatre is all about sharing an experience, so we mainly select our material thinking what is worth sharing with a larger amount of people. In general, we only do things that are of value to us. It’s a very precious moment to be allowed to invite people into that world and therefore to us extremely important to be really sensitive to their experience of it and realize how that alters it, incorporate that and feed that back in the moment. We love the immediacy of the theatre like that. We love all the gadgets the theatre has to offer, the sound, the light, all what can amplify the experience but in the end the work really comes down to our bodies, that need to be ultra present in the space and then somehow channel all our hopes and dreams and try to meet the people somewhere in the middle.

2. Which way are you going?

We met each other in the school; we studied at the School for New Dance Development. New Dance, that is quite a name to live up to. We are constantly learning, also how to work with each other; each presentation we do can totally flip things around for us and show us new things. It’s not so much about looking for the new thing but really about trying to really do what you want to be doing and in our case we love to challenge ourselves. It’s not enough to just set a goal and then try to reach that, we really try to be ambitious towards the unknown so we can surprise ourselves. If there is anything we try to achieve then it is to get people to that place where they get kind of energized by what we do so they experience things on another plane, getting shaken up a bit can totally help for that, just to start a fire in the chest without having to name it.

3. Where are you going to?

We are more and more aware of the fact that we are surrounded by a lot of great people, friends, colleagues, and it’s great to bring them together. Not all of them work in the field of dance or theatre but actually we are not so busy with defining those things. Starting projects is a great opportunity for bringing different people together, but we never feel that these projects stay separated one from another. When one of us gets involved in a project then this also involves the other, or our friends, for example. We are trying to grasp as many possibilities to get everybody up and going; who knows where we are heading, preferably in as many directions at the same time. It’s so great when you see people really do their thing, uncompromised. It’s really a challenge to think beyond what is already given, but that’s exactly the challenge we are ready to face and being surrounded by people who do the same is really liberating. Getting paid for what you do makes things easier, it can make you more mobile, but money is never the goal, trust is the new currency.